A Brush With Death

Losing friends and family members to the disease of addiction has taught me that this disease is serious. Escaping life and getting fucked up can be really fun and some times humorous, but those of us that have suffered the reality of loss know the final destination is not funny.

We can sit in meetings and laugh at all the stupid things we have done, but when we actually lose a loved one to this disease and they die, it gets really real. Most of us either are or know a person who is an addict. If that person never has the desire to change, then the possibility of death, insanity or imprisonment are supremely real.

When we “get it, the desire to change burns in our hearts like a tattoo made with a branding iron.

It is the only passion that can save us. Without it we stay in our sick situations: Drinking, snorting, shooting up. eating, smoking, cheating or turning a blind eye to all of the latter keeps us from attaining our true path.

To be a better more effective person is not always a desire in a person’s life. Sometimes mediocre getting by and accepting an unfinished life is all we will ever aspire to.

Our Higher Power can create miracles, but can our Higher Power give us desire?

Do we stay in the wake of a short trip to death or in a long slow eroded life and never have the desire to change?

I was given grace. I was given a burning desire to change my life and I have accepted all the circumstances of the change. I was 35 years old and maybe I had more drunks in me, but I was given the choice and I was ready that day. I took the hand of life and I made a choice to live.

I am forever grateful for that gift of desperation.

I have walked through some pretty stupid situations sober. It is not always easy to stumble around sober completely aware of being like a child learning to walk. This can be awkward when you’re a grown person.

But in the effort to grow there have been times I see how being sober can help others. We have talked a fellow addict off a ledge, poured the liquor down the sink, dragged their asses to a meeting, sat up into the wee hours with them, spent hours on the phone, using our gifts to create another and another reprieve from a brush with death.

Drama you say? Funny? This fucking disease kills.

But,

I choose sobriety today one day at a time…

and I am forever grateful.

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